Google Removes CamScanner App From Play Store

Google has taken action against a very popular App named CamScanner today and has removed it immediately from the Play Store after it was found to spread malware. This App was being used by millions of people worldwide for the purpose of scanning PDF documents since its launch back in 2010.

According to a recent research by Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky, Camscanner was reported to spread malware on Android devices without the users knowing about it. On analyzing the App, this antivirus company found out that an advertising library in it contains a malicious dropper component and they believe that this was because of CamScanner’s association with an unethical advertiser.

The main malicious component found out by Kasperksy was ‘Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Necro.n’. Based on these findings, they reported this issue immediately to Google after which the App was pulled out of the Play Store.

The issue caused by the malware included “intrusive ads” and asked users to sign up for paid subscriptions. Also, the malware could hack in to the user’s server and download additional code.

Inspite of having a 100 millions users, CamScanner had lately been garnering a lot of negative reviews on the Play Store which could be an indication that some unnecessary features were being added to the App.

CamScanner has responded back to these allegations and they have now deleted the malicious code from their App. They said that all the ads SDKs have been removed that violated the guidelines of Google Play Store. The new version of the App is now available to download from their website.